FINA has made a change to the dates of the qualifying period for the 2017 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary, per a memorandum updated on June 17th.
The qualifying period, previously spanning from March 1st, 2016 to July 13th, 2017, has been cut short by a week. The new qualifying period still began on March 1st of this year but will end on July 5th, 2017 rather than the 13th. This won’t have a huge impact on most countries, as the majority of athletes attending will have earned their qualification time by then. It does, however, take one weekend off of someone who is scrambling to earn a time’s schedule.
The standard ‘A’ and ‘B’ qualifying times apply to the meet, as a country needs two swimmers under the ‘A’ qualifying time if they want to send both. In order for a country to send one swimmer that swimmer must be under the ‘B’ qualifying time.
There is a specific criteria that allows swimmers to enter if they haven’t achieved either standard. The criteria is as follows:
- If a federation has no swimmers qualified they can enter two male and two female participants.
- If they have one or two qualified they can enter an additional four (two male, two female).
- If three are qualified they can enter one additional swimmer provided both genders are represented.
- Swimmers entered without qualifying times must have competed in their nations National Championships or a FINA approved qualifying event.
Click here to find all qualifying standards. Find the updated memorandum from FINA here.
